Yahk tourist cabins

To keep our sanity on long road trips we often make it a plan to do a little history exploring along the way…plus we play the “Boler Spotting Game” where we keep a look out for those little cute namesake camping trailers…but that’s another story. These stops do many things: it breaks the monotony and allows us to work our tired minds and stretch our sore limbs. It also lets us connect with the area we are passing through and we always come away understanding more than we did before we stopped.

Even the most obscure place or town can offer some kind of history to explore. We sometimes plan ahead and know what we will be examining (I have seen these cabins many times and planned them for this trip), or sometimes we just see something interesting and stop. Either way, it makes the trek so much better.

The cabins seen in this report were originally known as Allen’s Auto Camp and were built sometime in the 1930s. This is the extent of what we know of them at this point. Not much really, but it’s a start and we’ll continue to search out data on these terribly cute little structures. If our readers know anything, they are of course encouraged to share their knowledge.

Looking like many other auto camps, tourist cabins and motor courts from the era, these catered to the then new generation of traveller who used their private autos to explore the world around them.

There are only three units here, which seems oddly small. No evidence of other cabins could be found so I guess this must have been all of them. Each building has a main room, a bedroom and a biffy. There are also some common-use bathrooms in a separate cabin, along with a common-use kitchen shack. This all leads me to believe they must have had tenting sites on the property too but nothing could be found to confirm that however.

The three cabins are connected by a boardwalk. Each has has a nicely done and rustic stone-inlaid cement landing and the cabins them self seem to be of very solid construction. Plastic flowers hanging from the eaves are a kichy touch.

There is no confirmed date when this place shut down, but it must have been not terribly long ago. Everything is still in very good shape.

There is, I guess was since it’s now closed, a restaurant across the highway (which used to belong to a friend’s family), along with some other out buildings. I am not sure if these were connected in any way with the cabins at some point but these are the only other extant buildings close by.

Inevitably one bit of history exploring leads to another and just before the cabins, I saw the foundations of what must be the old Yahk sawmill (the slash burner ring in this case). I have been down this highway many times and this was the first time I saw that. Proving that even for someone who looks for stuff like this, there is always more yet to see. We’ll try to explore it on another trip.

To see some old hotels we explored in Yahk, follow this link…
Yahk then and now.

If you wish more information on this place, by all means contact us!

Date of adventure: August 2012.
Location: Yahk, BC.

Number three of three cabins.

The little buildings are just so charming and cute.

The insides are in good shape.

Plastic flowers are a kichy touch.

Cabin one.

The common kitchen shack.

The cabins are connected by a boardwalk.

Cabin two.

The three cabins and in the distance, the kitchen cabin and behind it, the biffy shack.